Two main companies that have established many years of success with low cost consumer power line communications equipment are X-10 and Phonex. The X-10 products are the current industry standard for low bandwidth communications over power lines for control applications.
The X-10 technology is incorporated into a wide range of products that meet the low bandwidth requirements, but the X-10 products are far from reliable. In fact, the reliability is sufficiently unreliable that the X-10 technology should not be implemented in life safety devices like smoke detectors and is usually relegated to lighting control applications. The Phonex technology is incorporated into telephone extension and modem extension devices that have higher bandwidth than is needed for control and alarm communication. However, even higher reliability is needed when security or fire alarm messages need to be communicated. What is needed, therefore, is a highly reliable, low bandwidth power line communication technology for the communication of control, alarm, and short messaging data through the power distribution lines in homes and offices.